174 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



diluvial period. It was then probably densely wooded 

 with forests similar to those in the modern Soudan, 

 and must have swarmed with animal life in the air, on 

 the land, and in the water, including many formidable 

 and dangerous beasts. On the other hand, to a people 

 derived from the Euphratean plains and accustomed 

 to irrigation, it must have seemed a very garden of 

 the Lord in its fertility and resources. 



There is good reason to credit the Egyptian tradi- 

 tions that the first colonists crossed over from Southern 

 Arabia by the Red Sea from that land of Pun to which 

 the Egyptians attributed their theology, and settled 

 in the neighbourhood of Abydos, and that they made 

 their way thence to the northward, at a time when 

 the delta was yet a mere swamp, 1 and when they had 

 slowly to extend their cultivation in Lower Egypt by 

 dikes and canals. If we ask when the first immi- 

 grants arrived, we are met by the most extravagantly 

 varied estimates, derived mainly from attempts to 

 deduce a chronology from the dynastic lists of 

 Egyptian kings. That these are very uncertain, and 

 in part duplicated, is now generally understood, but 

 still there is a tendency to ask for a time far exceed- 

 ing that for which we have any good warrant in 

 authentic history elsewhere. Herodotus estimated 

 the time necessary for the deposition of the mud of 

 the delta at 20,000 years ; but if we assume that 

 this deposit has been formed since the land approxi- 

 mately attained to its present level, allowing for 



1 Herodotus, Book II. chap. 15. 



